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Loaves & Fishes’ school for homeless children has asked Sacramento County to increase the number of emergency shelter beds for families, citing a spike in the number of children sleeping on Sacramento streets. Mustard Seed School Director Casey Knittel said of the 40 families whose children enrolled in the school in September, 19 were camping in a car or tent. With days getting cooler, rainy weather expected this weekend, Knittel said those children need to be inside at night. Burke said...

Preschools around the United States and in California are deeply segregated, a new report from Penn State finds. Around the country, white children are overwhelmingly going to preschool with only other white children, and more than half of all black and Latino children under five attend preschool where 90 percent of the students are children of color. That's also the case in California, one of two states with the lowest enrollment of white children in public preschool programs. In fact, a...

Teaching is one of the most stressful occupations in the country, but introducing organizational and individual interventions can help minimize the negative effects of teacher stress. The Issue This research brief examines causes of teacher stress, its effects on teachers, schools, and students, and strategies for reducing its impact. Key Findings Forty-six percent of teachers report high daily stress, which compromises their health, sleep, quality of life, and teaching performance. When...

Teaching is one of the most stressful occupations in the country, but introducing organizational and individual interventions can help minimize the negative effects of teacher stress. The Issue This research brief examines causes of teacher stress, its effects on teachers, schools, and students, and strategies for reducing its impact. Key Findings Forty-six percent of teachers report high daily stress, which compromises their health, sleep, quality of life, and teaching performance. When...

In New Orleans, violence is already at profoundly high levels: 54 percent of children ages 10 to 16 have had a close friend or relative murdered and nearly 40 percent have witnessed domestic violence. And in the past few years, the increased use of social media has added a new wrinkle to the problem as virtual disputes between students turn physical. Several school leaders, coaches and social workers across New Orleans say fistfights instigated by social media slights have become...

For 15-year-old Zion Agostini, the start of each school day is a new occasion to navigate a minefield of racial profiling. From an early age, walking home from elementary school with his older brother, Agostini took note of the differential treatment police gave to black people in his community: “I [saw] people get stopped … get harassed … get arrested for minor offenses.” Almost a decade later, Agostini said he now faces the same treatment as a sophomore at Nelson Mandela School for Social...

Only in this century have science and society come to understand the mental and physical repercussions of a rough childhood. But 18 years after publication of the groundbreaking Adverse Childhood Experiences study and multiple follow-up studies, few resources yet exist to help children contend with or avoid the troubling list of childhood adversity — sexual, verbal and physical abuse; neglect; poverty; community violence; and bullying, among others. These exposures cumulatively scar a...

Teachers and staff are the heart of a school – working together, we can create a healthy, thriving environment for school employees and students alike. In our new three-part webinar series you’ll learn how school employee wellness can be sustained, how to support school employees’ mental health and wellbeing, and how to work with unions representing school staff to promote wellness. This series builds on last year’s successful and informative school employee wellness webinar series that is...

LucidWitness blogposts are designed for social media to help grow awareness of developmental trauma among your network(s).

In parts of the 19 states where the practice is still legal, corporal punishment in schools is used as much as 50 percent more frequently on children who are African American or who have disabilities, a new analysis of 160,000 cases during 2013-2014 has found. Corporal punishment — typically striking a child with a wooden paddle — continues to be a widespread practice in disciplining children from pre-K through high school, according to a new study by Elizabeth Gershoff of The University of...

A new one-year agreement between Waco Independent School District and the Klaras Center for Families - Heart of Texas Region MHMR will allow the school district to give more help to students who have experienced trauma than ever before. The $103,000 agreement approved by the district’s school board Sept. 29 will put a case worker and either a licensed professional counselor or a licensed clinical social worker on the Brazos High and Middle School Credit Recovery Center and the GL Wiley...

Books on how to create trauma-informed schools, on restorative practices in schools, community schools, on educator self-care, and on managing kids in classrooms. If you recommend any others besides those listed here, please leave a comment in this blog post with a link and/or information.